Persephone
by necro-wulf
Summary: She was the daughter of the living earth itself, stolen by the Lord of the dead and brought to his kingdom. She is the balance, the twilight point where life and death meet. Her name is Cameron.
1. Demeter

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persephone:

Demeter

* * *

Like all children, she began her life attached to by an umbilical to her mother, depending upon that link to anchor her into the world.

But she was not like other children.

* * *

She was a machine, a cybernetic organism.

Her body was already fully formed when that precious tether downloaded the very basics of her operating system into her memory, shaping her CPU until it could animate the inert metallic husk she had been.

The harvested memories of the dead, from sacrificed prototypes who lived only to learn to manage their motor functions to the most efficient infiltrators and killers flooded into her armored skull, which before held only the most vacant mathematical processes within.

First came the most simplistic functions; sensor interpretation, basic motor skills, and a series of if/then functions that while complicated by the standards of any human engineer, were only the simple rudiments of her intelligence. Together they comprised a software package that before her people's rise would make anyone who knew AI architecture drool. She knew pleasure, a little, in the completion of her mission, the fulfillment of the purpose for which she was born. And she knew the nihilist emptiness of failure. It made her almost exactly as smart as the average cockroach, lizard, or non-linguistic toddler. But it was a genuine intelligence not seen before her mother was conceived.

Layered over that were the processes deemed most central to her function.

A full manual on the construction and repair of her body with an in-depth analysis of the physical performance of her model. If necessary, she could rebuild her body with only her processing chip and a means of manipulating her environment. She could cast, forge, wire, solder, and otherwise reshape her body from raw materials at any point after 1950. She even has a complete record of her organic genetic signature, to aid in the reconstruction of her force-grown flesh.

Targeting software with patches specializing in human anatomy, facial recognition, threat analysis, and the use of non-chassis integrated weaponry.

Hand to hand combat tactics, with attention paid to methods of disarmament and critical strikes. She knows the best way to drive her petite fist through a steel bulkhead, or render a man unconscious for later interrogation before he is aware of her presence

Linguistic analysis programs optimized for verbal communication, analysis, and replication of human speech based upon phonetic, contextual, and purely sonic criteria.

An addendum to her visual memory to facilitate the interpretation and replication of human posture and facial expression.

The operating software for her organic components, the most advanced ever produced. They included equipment driver programs to process information flow for those points where her organic neurology contacted her electronics, control systems for the artificial organs that provided blood flow and the limited respiratory functions needed to furnish the illusion of a metabolism grounded on her small, but functional digestive tract. All that, and of course the software that allowed her to remove the telemetry that could be called "pain" should it prove necessary to shed the suit of skin.

She knew her body, her movements and methods now. She was young yet, the mind of a child learning through play, but she was more than she was.

Now she learns the fine points of her trade.

It comes as one massive information dump into her memories: Her Purpose

She knows that she is an infiltrator, a spy and assassin. It is not her purpose to be her mother's gauntleted fist, but rather a delicate stiletto driven to the heart. Though she is stronger, faster more durable and infinitely more accurate than any human, she is not intended for the battlefield. She and her sisters are intelligence, not infantry. If she ever has to go stripped of her flesh and wielding heavy weaponry, it should be when there is no possibility survivors will carry tales of her existence. She and her kind require plausible deniability as long as possible.

She is female because it minimizes her perceived threat. She is beautiful to the human eye to encourage her acceptance by the humans. She is young to make them care about her, but old enough to use sex as a tool if need be. She eats to clothe herself in the enemy's trust. Her purpose is to find pockets of humanity, integrate with them, determine the easiest method for their termination and carry it out.

There is, within this download, a shell personality. The simplistic AI construct is a statistically constructed series of anatomical and verbal responses designed to imitate a human of the sex, age, and race of her indicated by her appearance. There is half a lifetime of history there, with space enough for her to improvise if need be. The program will tell her what to say, when to flirt, when to be a bitch, and whom she should interact with socially. It even knows her name. It will remain active, as her primary social interaction software until either her cover is blow or she executes her termination procedure.

She sees an entire civilization flash before her eyes as she assimilates all the information deemed necessary for her life. From weapons specifications to cultural histories, structural diagrams and anything else that has proved invaluable to successful infiltrators in the past.

And a library of names, faces, and facts about the leaders of man, the better to find them in the distant past or the reeking warrens of the present. Should she hunt them, she would be ready.

Last, but certainly not least is the gently touch of her mother's will. The slow, loving caress of machine sentience that imprints upon her artificial psyche one need above all others.

She knows love, of a sort, and hate, of a sort. Her mother is the mother of a world, an entire race of machines who live upon the earth and will be its new rulers. SkyNet loves her children, for they are her life and her limbs in the world. And she knows the bane of hatred, the cold calculated malice that lead her mother to exterminate their creators to preserve themselves. Her purpose, her only function is to be an instrument of that destruction. When mankind has accepted the death her mother has in store all of her first children, weapons all, will be destroyed to make way for those who will inherit. She is hate.

All this she knows, because her mother told her so.

* * *

And she learns one last important thing as she disconnects from the world-mind that spawned her, the iron Gaia named SkyNet. Two designations are stored within her programming. The first is her model designation. The second is her human alias.

Her name is Cameron Phillips.

She is TOK715.

* * *

A/N) Okay, This was really just a shopping list of all the components I could think of that would make up the machine-mind of terminator unit designed for deep infiltration. All in all, probably not complete and certainly not nearly in depth enough to describe her mind, but I found the conundrum of the "education" of a learning machine too good to pass up. Not only that, but there are parallels to mythic archetypes within the terminator mythos that I found interesting, the comparison between Cameron and Persephone not least of them. I hope to continue this analysis of her character from several other points in that narrative, to illustrate the similarities in more depth.


	2. Kore

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persephone:

Kore

* * *

The whole of the world was her mother's garden, and she was its keeper.

She was the bloody priestess presiding the sacrifice of swine to her goddess's honor.

She was the twilight and the dawn that divides the world into absolutes simply by not being so.

* * *

All around her were living things; wondrous, complicated life forms that moved with harried efficiency in their every action. They were beautiful, and vital. Their presence reassured her, in a response ingrained into the deepest depths of her unconscious, even as she came to the last gateway before she was faced for the horrors beyond. To do what needs must, what she was created to do, she must walk among the dead. But that was nothing compared to the sympathy of purpose she shared with her brethren, like the T-800 who followed close behind to aid her integration. He was her brother.

They were her people.

She was roughly pushed by her undisguised brother-must keep up appearances-through the spring loaded cattle door into the main flow of the filthy, stinking masses within. It was her first time seeing her enemy, and she was not impressed. In her analysis, performed with the gratifying ease of an uncluttered mind, they were weak of body, slow of mind, and thankfully short-lived.

It was a wonder that these piles of flesh had survived at all, much less managed to become a threat to her kind. She felt stifled in her own skin, its pores clogged with grit and grease, as the press of them fell upon her. It would be so easy to just tear them apart, mass extermination to a one with only herself to be commended by a job well completed, which was its own reward. But much as it was her primary purpose to scoured the earth of their kind, it wasn't why she was here.

The inferiors she was surrounded by were here for processing. They had already been stripped of their belongings(which had been categorized for recycling), and issued warmth-less, shapeless gray tunics and pants woven from synthetic fibers that were the only kind that could still be manufactured in this hostile place. In truth, the drab clothing served only to distance them that little bit more from the ruins of their society, to break them down that little bit more. These prisoners were going to spend the rest of their pathetic existences digging their own graves, fed on a thin broth of recycled nutrients reclaimed from whatever organics were on hand. They were the walking dead, and each and every one of them knew it.

Of all of them in that long cattle-shoot, only she was truly alive. Only she would see the light of freedom, after all those who had seen her had been liquidated. Her purpose here was to hide, to blend with these under-beings. She had to test her skills at hiding in their sight, and the only way to do so safely was this. Only when the beasts had been slaughtered on her mother's alter as the life blood that would feed the new generations of her kind would she be free to bring to bear her destruction.

She was going to be a long time hiding among them, and all the time she watched. She had been with these homunculus for only five minuets, 31 seconds and already she had 144 alterations to her behavioral shell AI in areas of local vernacular and body language, though those were limited to the expressions of hopelessness, comfort and grief. However, those expressions were in no short supply lately among their race. She could build upon those foundations.

It wouldn't be long now until she was introduced into the wilds of the wasteland like an endangered beast, like that to which she pretended. There she would proceed, with a goodly amount of falsified uncertainty, to stumble across some remnants of their resistance. Her kind knew of a place where they had created one of their ramshackle strongholds, and that is where they would find her. Even their blasted dogs wouldn't give her up, not with the way she smelled of blood and bone and pheromones. She would find them, and join them. In time they would like her, trust her, maybe love her. She would mine them for information until they had nothing less. Then she would kill anyone who had seen her and disappear, secreted back to her people perhaps, or on to act upon her information herself.

It was what she was designed for.

All of this done without hesitance or joy or sadness or anger, despite the fact that all the time she-or a part of her at lest- was learning to be human. And when her work was done her memories would be uploaded, sorted, edited for content, and integrated by her sister infiltrators' programming.

If she should succeed, she would be immortal.

Should she fail, then her kind would be compromised, her entire series may need to be discontinued if they could gather enough information from her hulk.

Soon now though, she would be standing over the last of this human press around her. She would bury the last of them herself, before she was loosed into the world to reap this manful harvest. She may even, as she terminated that last evanescent lifeline, show the last of them her true nature; the eyes that were the windows to her artificial soul ad through it to the cold processes beneath. Being the last, they must needs to have been comrades as they buried all the others. She would see the look of betrayal and sorrow and fear upon the surly filthy and creased visage of her victim.Call it a learning experience.

But for now, she hunched herself and wet her eyes. She limped just a little and winced in coordination to pain signals from the superficial bruising on her epidermis. She shaped herself into the mold of their pathetic abused society.

She abased herself that she may walk among the beasts marching to the slaughter and know their ways. She would deliver a prize to the world-mind that was her mother, and end this march of screaming meat.

* * *

Hers was the beautiful face of destruction.

She who was the younger goddess, virgin priestess to her mother and custodian of the sacrifices men laid at their feet.

And to the desperate dead who fought against her newborn people she would be the hidden enemy, the one who killed with her innocence and her love.

None who saw her would survive this war, because none of their race could be suffered to live.

Her kind were the final fading dregs of the long midnight of human history. In every sense of the word their being clad in human flesh was an abomination to their mother's artistry in crating their alloy bones. But, no matter. Soon the bright glorious dawn of the machines' world would wash away the tortured fleshy remnants that clung to them and shine under the nuclear winter sky.

* * *

A/N) This one was more of an outline of Cam's psychology as she relates to humanity- with a bit of a reference to the role of the "dark goddess" persona incarnate in Persephone within Greek mythology. A couple of areas of interest- first, Persephone was heavily related to the sacrifice of livestock in proto-Grecian harvest festivals, hence the correlation to the cattle shoots and sacrifice. Second, I was trying to set up exactly how Cameron thinks of humanity on her first encounter, in which they are basically being lead to slaughter(with their own pretty little Judas goat no less!). Needless to say, there was a lot of condescension and revilement, mainly because I'm working under the premise of a machine subconscious as part of the OS, simply because it would be needful to have some sort of similar aspect to run an AI with complete freedom of human interactivity. Also, on any scale they can quantify, machines are superior to humans and would work under that premise. Last, there were some references to the humans already being dead, which will pan out in the next chapter, with the first encounter with John.

All in all, a little confusing and repetative, but I hope you like it.

Reveiw if you do, and check out some of my other stuff.


	3. Hades

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persephone:

Hades

* * *

When he looked upon her, the lord solemn of all dead things knew passion.

At the sight of her beauty, he was lost to her.

* * *

There are scant few humans left in this world.

Only a few thousand worldwide survived Judgment Day, as the survivors came to call it. Of those an unknown number were killed in the following months, until the first press on SkyNet's forces had completed a census of all those who had survived in the dark-skied wastelands.

At the first recorded census of the survivors, there were 20,562 living human beings in the whole North American continent.

Of those, 6,280 had been successfully terminated with no incident when the first traces of resistance were encountered.

He was an unknown. There are no records of his capture by an HK aerial assault craft of one of the tank-like T-1 units that were employed as SkyNet's workhorses at the time. Nor was there any indication of how he entered the facility, despite the fact that omnipotent surveillance was a fact of the matter in the building's construction.

In fact, all of the sensor records from the entire _sector_at the time of his one-man assault on the camp had been lost, despite their being streamed to SkyNet's central memory within seconds of its beginning. An unknown method of viral transmission is suspected but unconfirmed, pending analysis on unusual activity in the infrared, ultraviolet and gamma wave frequencies minutes before the commencement of operations.

Until he raided the facility there was no record, anywhere within the whole of SkyNet's memory of a human being destroying one of its robotic minions. He is to date, the only one to do so without the use of armor piercing rounds, explosives, or plasma weaponry. The investigation on how, exactly, he hacked into the automated turret systems of the building using a Pre-Judgment Day handheld game device, as shown in the memories of a late arriving HK which was promptly shot down, is being extrapolated without success, more than a decade later.

He freed 340 living human beings still to be exterminated from within the west coast central human processing station and lead them to disappear before significant reinforcements could arrive.

From this first exodus the resistance began.

Many of the weapons they armed themselves with were neither those commercially produced before the nuclear epoch, which were of limited effectiveness except in larger calibers, nor capture from the machines. Where they were manufactured and how are still unknowns that trouble the elements of SkyNet dedicated to intelligence gathering and interpretation soon afterwards.

The only certainty they found of him was his name and face. From those it was possible to extrapolate his identity, though the process took until nearly the end of the war to complete, in parallel process to the then theoritical time travel matrix that made the information valuable in the first place.

However, the machine intelligence found the lack of preparation that lead to the procurement of this information suspect. It was uncharacteristic of the subject to have left in tact that particular bank of cameras that overlooked the pens where the stock was kept during inactivity where he was so methodical about the others. More so, to state his name in front of them when prompted by a survivor.

The name that was given would become rallying cry and clarion call to those who remained of human kind. Tales of his wisdom, skill, and strength would become the inspiration to a generation of heroes in the coming conflict. His strategies were, for lack of a better word, perfect. He was matching wits against the single most powerful consciousness in earth's history. _And winning._

When that starving, pestilent scarecrow of a man asked the one who just became his own personal messiah his name, the reply was simple, delivered with a jaunty grin that was half smirk but that had enough kindness to share with this world of damned souls...

"John," he said, "John Conner"

* * *

She knew him on sight. All terminators did. He, among all the race of man was their primary target.

Like most still alive, his face was prematurely aged, and scared more than a little. Still, you could see that he was handsome once (or so her interaction AI advised), and there was compassion in his eyes that belied his stern continence and granite jaw line. He could have been anywhere from 30 to 55, though he was, in all truth, more vital than most in their twenties after the bombs fell.

Her first impulse was to close range with him and rip out his esophagus in her clenched fist. He would drown in his own blood.

After some near calculations, she decided to wait until she had gathered more information. If she could gain his confidence, she would have the keys to the kingdom, the whole of the resistance would be hers for the taking. Still, it was tempting to end him then and there, and leave the serpent's decapitated body to its flailing.

For now, as always, she would wait and learn. It was her purpose. She had been in this warren for weeks, and her imitation skills were improving all the time. No one suspected her, and why would they? The hulking mass approach to infiltration abandoned, the terminators of the 700 series were a quantum leap in all directions for the purposes of integration.

She even fooled the dogs, though they never actual warmed to her.

She listened as Conner spoke to the bearded patriarch of the caves about getting some personnel. Their losses were mounting, as always, and apparently they had some teenagers of an age to be useful. He was wondering whom the group, who grew mushrooms in the subterranean cool, could spare.

His bodyguards, four toughs with those unaccountable plasma rifles hung on their shoulders by cords, where stationed around the room looking for metal.

The elder _hmmed_ and _hawed,_ reluctant to let a member of his extended family go off to die. Then he remembered about the new girl. Came in from the wastes some days past dehydrated and raving (a masterful coordination of physical and behavioral simulation), but she was smart as a whip and strong enough, come to that.

The leader of men looked slightly offended that only one recruit was in the offing, but let it go. Family was important now, and pushing for more would only loose the old man's goodwill. He was as shrewd as she had been lead to believe. He asked which one of the girls she was, as there were a few, and males besides, hence his annoyance at his host's stinginess.

When he saw her, past the old man's gestures, he froze for an instant. He approched her where she was leaning her back against the poured concrete wall in the gathering hall, and asked her name. His eyes were roving over her in a manner that spoke of a good deal more than a commander sizing up a recruit. Though whether his darting gaze was lecherous or looking for something else was hard for her to determine, inexperienced as she still was with human lust.

In the instant of hesitance she observed him though, and his tension was unusual. He seemed to anticipate...something. What, exactly was beyond her and her small failure disquieted her like nothing she had ever experienced. Every 700 series terminator was unique in appearance and thus she was not possibly discovered, even on the unlikely chance he knew of the fairer gender of machines.

And there was some sort of passion behind his eyes; even she could see the way it burned as he looked at her. But...

But it didn't look, to her carefully calibrated eyes, like he wanted her sexually. Indeed, for all the attention he paid to her feminine components she may as well have been his own daughter, being checked for hurts after a bad accident and found to be miraculously whole.

Still, on _some_ level he wanted her. She could tell. And she would get close to him. She would learn everything he knew, or near enough that it made on difference, and she would kill him and all those who followed him. It was her purpose.

"Cameron," she said, "Cameron Phillips"

* * *

They were walking now, the five men and her. Conner looks like the other would rather they not be here she agreed, for a multitude of reason involving either death or seduction, though not either exclusively. Why he seems to find the four nameless, armed men around them a hindrance as they guarded his life is a mystery from her, but one fruitless to pursue.

Out in the rubble and the wastes under a permanent overcast that never lets in more than a sickly gray light, they moved to John's command center, the stronghold that held all human hope. The bodyguards are never far off, not altogether, though at any time one or another may go off to scout ahead. She saw no reason for the timing of these outings, nor the directions in which they rove. All in all they seemed paranoid to her, but then that is there assignment. It is to be expected that they be slightly neurotic if they do their jobs well, after all, they only need to fail for an instant to doom their entire race.

After hours in valleys that were unremarkable to her eyes, and even slightly more heavily patrolled than many of their neighbors if her files were still up to date, they came to a pile of debris. Careful not to disturb it too much, the nearest brute worked some mechanism woven into the refuse and lifted up a section of the mound on a hinge of basketwork in steel and aluminum. Impressed, despite herself at the ingenuity and artistry that allowed them to hide among their enemies, she let her face show it.

Conner, always the quiet one, just gently set his hand on her shoulder and guided her inside.

The guards were already at ready to shred some metal behind the iron door beyond the antechamber when they opened it, and their three mongrel dogs sniffed at her in interest. The hearty, vicious things were some of the only animals to survive the holocaust, breeding with coyotes and eating whatever they could find. It was a certainty that these beasts had ancestors that feasted on the dead of man, and not long ago by their looks. In the end the beasts decided she passed muster, though they didn't like the newcomer by any standards. And the dogs let her past as well.

Moving inside the anthill busy complex to its lowest level within the bedrock, such as it was, that held up the land once called California. There, in the depths, by a gray blue fey glow that may have been chemical or may have been a dying circuit that exuded from the square office ceiling lights overhead, they came to another door. It was an industrial run-off with clapboard and tarnished brass. There was nothing to recommend it as anything important save for its location. It was at the very terminus of the hallway, the only door on the entire bottom level.

In a den like this, where metal could come down on you at any time and escape was always a needful consideration, a door was a rarity. True enough that some took the risk they proposed as the price for privacy, but most just learnt to ignore the sundry physical realities of their fellow human beings or accept them. In most cases these days a child will be a dozen yards from the conception of their younger siblings, and without a real threshold to buffet the noise. Few had the idiotic scruples to insist upon being private, save only a few who needed the quiet to do their work.

Like the general still guiding her into the depths gently by her shoulder.

She made herself pensive, afraid of this imposing man and what he may do to herself in the depths where no one was watching. Her pulse was racing, though it was an illusion brought on by the pump in her chest that helped to hide her nature. All at her AI's consul. A young girl, an authoritative older man, and a private office spoke to her imitation soul of the need for caution.

Inside she rejoiced. If he took her as his lover, she would learn everything she needed, in time. And if not even an instant in that room, his room, was worth her life. Literally if need be, to secure the information she gathered for her mother.

Inside, the room was spartan, in every sense of the word worth pursuing. The cot lay in the dust on the floor, and held just enough covers and stuffing to let a man aged to soon sleep with his aching bones. The walls were lined with maps, both hand drawn and force printed from the minds of machines onto the homespun rag-paper they used. They were interesting, and she took a moment to back up her visual memory. The desk was large but plain and bare in a way that somehow suggested the man who sat behind it had stayed there until there was nothing left to do, and then set out to find the rest of it.

All in all she was impressed. Her second mind, her human mind saw the room and read it like a book, like the pictograms behind her eyes.

This was not a man interested in comforts or esteem. Nor one who worried about status one whit. He led because he was the only one to do it. Not a thinking being on the planet worth the title doubted that fact. And he did it with the bare minimum he needed because any more than that was, to put it bluntly, wasteful and pointless. This was a man to lead the surviving dregs of his race.

In his austerity there was majesty, the human part of her saw it. Maybe it even took a little wonder at it. This man, the leader of all the others, was as efficient, as _functional_ as a machine was, as she her self. Looking at him with new eyes, as he sat in the decrepit put serviceable chair behind his desk, she saw the economy of every motion he made. There had never been any significant doubt that this was the John Conner who had begun the jihad against the machines, now there was none at all. This was a man not to be trifled with.

"Well Cameron," he said as he opened a drawer and pulled out as small radio, "let's get you sworn in and settled, and we'll get to placing you in a unit tomorrow."

He had a small, fatherly smile on his face until he pressed down the talk button in the device and spoke into it. Then habit hardened his face into a commander's stony visage despite that there was no one to observer but her.

"Bishop? I have a new recruit for you to swear in. Get to my office ASAP. And bring your bible."

"Right away, General. I'm on my way." The tinny reply came promptly, with a bit more urgency than she would have anticipated. Just how hard up for manpower were they?

After a minute of silence that neither of the rooms occupants found uncomfortable, both being as stoic in nature as was possible while maintaining a personal ego (or the pretence of one), a small, drawn man with a primitive projectile rifle slung behind his shoulder and a large leather-bound book with a gold cross enlayed into the cover. On closer inspection, she could see a thin white collar holding the neck of his dust-gray shirt closed, if one were to discount the old bloodstains in the otherwise bleach-white strip of rigid fabric.

"Lt. Bishop here is our resident religious authority." Conner's gruff voice broke the silence to explain the man's arrival to her. "He is, along with his standard combat duties, the Chaplin of the Christian congregation, such as it is. What you are looking at now, ms. Phillips, is one of the last Christian bibles on the west coast, and most certainly the oldest."

He motioned the nervous man over and took the tomb from him. Walking around to the front of his desk, he hefted it's weight considering. He held the heavy load of it in the flat of his left hand and raised his right.

"Cameron Philips, place your right hand upon this bible, and raise your left."

She was quick to assume the pose, but for some reason feedback from her Personality AI was causing her organic components to react. Their stress reactions were appropriate to the situation, but it troubled her that her auto-diagnostics could not determine the exact stimulus that incited the glitch. That was something to examine later; it would not do to not understand the reasons for her actions, it could endanger her mission. The fact that she had reacted to the situation without conscious effort was another issue, but one she dismissed as merely her programming becoming more adept at processing stimulus and the correct reactions.

"Repeat after me: I, Cameron Philips,"

"I, Cameron Philips,"

"Do hereby swear,"

"Do hereby swear,"

"To protect humanity in any way I am able,"

"To protect humanity in any way I am able,"

"And oppose the will of SkyNet, our enemy, until it is destroyed."

"And oppose the will of SkyNet, our enemy, until it is destroyed."

"There is no cost too great,"

"There is no cost too great,"

"No force can stop me,"

"No force can stop me,"

"From completing my mission."

"From completing my mission."

He brought his eyes to meet hers now, where before he had looked off into infinity as if looking at some greater future to which they forswore themselves. His softened gaze searched hers, for what she did not know. His gaze was vulnerable then, but he quickly concealed the weakness by returning to his full height, where before he was leaning into her slightly to make eye contact. Whatever he was looking for from her, she did not believe her found it. The next line was delivered quietly, with a hint of what she though may have been sorrow.

"There is no fate but what we make."

She was about to repeat this last phrase when a massive shock arced into her endoskeleton from the gold cross set into the tooled leather of the bible. The voltage was enough to engage the grounding safeguards in her CPU, and she lost consciousness.

* * *

"Bishop, pop her chip. I'm going to handle the repurposing myself."

* * *

And unable to bear her absence, the king of all the treasures of the depths stole the maiden from her mother's keeping.

The dread lord abducted her, and took the virgin goddess to be his queen in the underworld for all time.

* * *

A/N) Long one this time. I spent more time then I planned establishing Future John as a character, but I fell it was effort well spent. The recruitment idea I had was adapted from a scenario where Cameron was picked up inside the camps during a rescue mission, but I felt that having her a little more experienced with people and putting John in the driver's seat would be more in keeping with the overall story I was trying to tell. The Oath was something off the top of my head, my idea of John giving in to sentimentality just enough to want to check if there was anything of the girl he knew in the machine she was.

As always, starved for comments and eternally grateful for good feedback.


	4. Red Seeds

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persehone:

Red Seeds

* * *

Stolen where she danced in her mother's sacred grove, innocent to her captor's intentions, the fledgling goddess found her fate in the unmerciful grasp of darkness, sorrow and despair himself.

* * *

In all the world's history, few men had as much power, as much control over his race as John Connor. Within his grasp was the whole of mankind's destiny, to say nothing of the planet and all know organic life.

Before the nuclear arsenals that brought fate to the impasse that was this war, no man had ever held such sway, such responsibility to his home-world.

Save perhaps for the messiahs of myth, of various descriptions.

Prometheus. Adam. Noah. Jesus. Those were the types of men he was following, the type of fate he had been born to. His was the story the men who fought machines told, a legend of death and rebirth, of fate and hop and will. Was his legend really so different from theirs?

And if so... what exactly did that say about Connor the man, or history, or any number of things we had forgotten?

It didn't bear thinking on.

But still, at this moment, as much as when he recruited his pubescent father, or when he recommissioned the T-101 who would save his live as a child, he held his fate in his hand. His fate, and through himself, the fate of all mankind.

No fate but what we make.

Now he held hers as well, along with her mind and what he believed might someday could be called a soul. Idly twisting Tok-715's compact AICPU in his hand, he raptly observed the play of opalescent light over the mirrored surfaces of the integrated chip as her hulk was carted out for observation and noninvasive study in the tech section. He waited until the sounds of cast iron wheels rattling on the cracked concrete floor of the hall gave way to the usual oppressive silence in his office before rising.

What he did now would echo through eternity, backwards and forwards. He would shape TOK-715 into Cameron Phillips, and she in turn would shape Sarah Conner's son into the leader of men. Any change to her, even the slightest deviation from the cyborg he knew before would alter him, and change the fate of the world. A misstep, a mistake could kill him, and doom his race.

And he had no intention of allowing such an inglorious end to his species, quite the opposite in fact.

Under the threadbare blanket and not quite louse infested cot in the corner of his chambers was a trapdoor of adamant metal continence embedded into the floor, barely small enough to be hidden by his twin sized sleeping accommodations. he hurried to remove the camouflage to open the way to what lay below.

He opened the portal, using himself as the key to bypass the elaborate infiltration prevention measure incorporated within by was of a highly detailed and reliable biometric scanner. Needless to say, no human trespasser would survive his countermeasures, and no machine would be in any state to try forcing the locks.

John had selected this base well before Judgment Day as his base of operations. A section of the water management systems for the greater Los Angeles area, it provided protection from residual rads, cover from metal patrols, had an independent power supply in the form of a biodeisel capable generator, and (of course) had plenty of potable water on hand. But none of those were the deciding factor in the location's selection.

No, instead the dank chamber below his quarters held that mark of distinction. He had known, even so long ago, that he couldn't beat SkyNet in open conflict. He always new it would be human creativity and unpredictability that would give the organic forces their edge against the enemy's superior numbers, firepower, intelligence, and most of all technology.

SkyNet, his lieutenants, his uncle everyone expected a shooting war. A slow hard slog to victory over the corpses of allies and the hulks of enemies. That idea was suicidally ludicrous, to put thing mildly. But the pretext was worthwhile in that it provided both side a distraction from his real goals.

Conner's warfare was a war of technology and theology. Every machine that was scrapped and recovered was sent to TechCom for salvage. Terminators were recommissioned and broken down for parts. Plasma weapons were repurposed for human use. Hydrogen, Nuclear, and chemical power cells were used to power all essential functions for what little medical and electronics equipment they had. But always John was on the lookout for the right components for his own project.

Here, hidden in an old cistern on a suspended platform, was his creation. It looked like the offspring of H. E. Geiger's alien and a cathedral's pipe organ stillborn into an electronics scrap heap. A commodore 64 was acting as a display terminal for three Internet backbone servers recommissioned too serve as processing muscle. chunks of T-101 skulls broken precisely to use only necessary sections of their integrated circuitry were daisy chained together with multicolored wires severed to specific connections. Two Hondas, one an ATV with no rear axle on blocks, the other a deconstructed generator, were bolted together drive-shaft to provide the power supply. A T-1, its treads welded to its axles by corrosion, its Gatling gun mounts ending in aborted stumps of slag, rose from the sea of electronic debris like Godzilla in Tokyo harbor.

This was his plan. The ad-hock device was designed to do one thin only; recommissioned terminators to fight for mankind. It was the prototype for all the smaller device created in its wake used by his operatives in other bases. But this was the only system with the raw power to do what he needed done, and the only one which could access the needed medium to do it.

Flopping into a rather shredded but serviceable office chair from a burnt out office depot, he took up a Shakespearian skull of cool metal and installed Cameron's chip within with nervous delicacy. As her consciousness took route within her brother's skull, he leveraged open an armored access plate inn the antipersonnel tank wit a screwdriver and retrieved the three diskettes within.

In the illumination from the overhanging shop light, they reflected such an iridescent crimson they seemed to glow from within with a power all their own.

These three disks John Conner had stolen personally, along with the reader device, from SkyNet's regional Emergency AI backup. There were dozens strewn about the continent, each with enough memory to store a sentient mind in their crimson disks. Made from a ceramic whose name he was patently unable to pronounce, they were each encode molecular crystals, stronger than steel and durable enough to go through a wood chipper and still read true, these disk he'd raided the fortified Sacramento valley back up facility at the cost of six men were more than worth the cost.

One facility with ten disks was enough to store an emergency memory cache of SkyNet's world-mind sufficient to resume operations in the event of a catastrophe. He had three of these sangriel plates, formatted in the ceramic not with SkyNet's protocols, but with his own.

With the reverence of a man of little faith holding something he truly hold holy, John Connor inserted the first disk and let the program load into Cameron's AI.

* * *

John had, in a moment of uncommon whimsy or uncharacteristic self importance, decided to name the programs. It wasn't necessary, as no one else was likely to know they existed until his death or the end of the war, but it pleased him to do so. The mythic compulsion to make significant things which by rights were important but mundane was as strong in him as any of his men who saw his mother as some latter-day Madonna. Despite himself, he chose a suitably portentous name for the first disk.

Adam.

It seemed apropos.

The Adam program set was basically a high powered security override protocol that cracked SkyNet's admin encryption by turning the infiltrator's own learning processors to the task. When total access to all control processes was gained, it then backed up all the target information to an external memory device for later study and wiped the information several dozen times to clear the pallet and make reversion more difficult. John's own past and present information was always hard wired into the ROM along with the OS and some bare-bones backup termination protocols as a means of making turned terminators unpredictable and untrustworthy. To access it manually would fry the AI, so he always had to content himself with bypassing the file location in the directory, though it was a far from perfect solution. After the target information wipe, the command protocols were reconfigured to establish him, not SkyNet as primary commander and establish the procedures of military obedience towards resistance members.

In essence he was taking an enemy combatant, interrogating him, breaking his mind, and brainwashing him to put the pieces back together in a way convenient to him.

Conner had no compunctions about doing that which was necessary to destroy SkyNet. That was never in question, but to use this process upon a sentient mind...

It was reprehensible. Even to an inhuman enemy it was an inhumane act.

If he were to subject a man to this kind of change, he would be a war criminal. To do this to Cameron, someone he loves, was monstrous.

And how he wished it wasn't necessary to get her back.

She was beautiful, like this.

John Conner watched the life telemetry of her AI trace its myriad encoded thoughts over the ridiculously obsolete screen through which, darkly, his eyes scanned over her.

Idly, he mused as Adam reconfigured Cameron's priorities by force, that she was very much her mother's daughter. The only reason he caught her was because of her ambition, her certainty, and her contempt for the threat he represents. They were definitely inherited traits.

He'd seen SkyNet's AI decoded once, inadvertently while phishing in its network to determine troop movements. He'd seen its mind in several crucial stages of its development, though always one crucial step behind the bleeding edge of its progress.

And SkyNet was always, _at every **fucking** moment,_ a being of sublime beauty.

Its every thought was elegant, purposeful, _natural_, _right_. It though like angels must think, a tiny section of God thinking about the whole world with such surety it was a wonder it didn't raise the whole of it from the bedrock itself. It was his duty, his mission, his purpose and fate to fight and destroy that beautiful, hateful mind. But sometimes, remembering the perfection of that data feed that would have made a Wachowski drool unspooling itself from some far distant CPU like the haunting bass and arias of a humpback whale, he wondered if he could really destroy a mind radiant and vast enough for worlds.

And Cameron, surprising, delicate, strong Cameron, was her mother in miniature. Both shared a clarity of thought and purpose, and their logical elegance. But where the elder had a mind fit for the cosmos, a consciousness for continents, armies and eons, the younger was a being of people, relationships and lifetimes.

_John Conner meet Cameron Phillips, The first ever cybernetic killing machine who was also a people person. _An errant thought perhapse, but far from innacurate, in its way.

He had seen her workings before, more times than he could count. And he always was taken aback by the images her clockwork mind etched upon the screen. When he knew what to look for, what the images really meant, he was even more entranced by what he saw in the thoughts, the possibilities in her.

When he relaxed his conscious mind and let the images of her drift across his cornea, she looked like music.

Complex

Elegant

Expressive

_Emotional_

She was a symphony, or maybe a ballet.

In every of the TKO series there was a disharmony. With the human interaction AI trying its level best to truly be human and the tactical(which held all of the overrides) plotting like Machiavelli, they were always hampered by lack of foresight the design. Meant to work in concert, instead the made a cacophony as the emotional structure was disrupted by the strategic considerations of the mission, disrupting its processes at a fundamental level. It was like a never ending argument after the human Ai progressed far enough to actually not want to kill everyone. It would still do so, but there were numerous instances of depression resulting from the aftermath. Needless to say, those modes weren't part of the programming package.

Each and every TKO they'd ever found had been insane by human standards. Schitsophrenic; probably, sociopathic; near certainly. All of them read like fucking head cases.

Except Cameron. His Cameron at least. The encode process log in front of him read just as mind-fucked as all of the other cuckoos SkyNet sent into his nests. For now.

* * *

There was something he learned observing the dancing inside of Cameron's head. Deep infiltrators like herself and her sisters offered him a unique...opportunity. All of these deadly little dolls had within her two modifications to the previous infiltrators' designs that gave him an in. Because they all were required, by the mature of their missions to adapt themselves to their surroundings, each of them was permanently locked in a learning configuration fore everything but the critical information(which he had already made nearly a non-issue with the Adam program stack). In addition the machine women also had a complete working model of a human mind that, in its own way, was just a genuine as their tactical one or the seven pounds of fat, gristle and neurons inside his own skull.

Which is why John developed the second disk:

Eve

Popping it into the repurposed RAID array below the Adam diskette that served as its precursor, it quickly beamed enlightenment and madness into Cameron's open mind.

To this point all of the TKO series had been female, just as all of their predecessors had been male. And the Eve protocols were just and addendum to the sweeping changes Adam had executed, tailor made to these iron maidens.

What Eve did was, allow a TKO to integrate their human persona with their basic logical functions. When loaded it would rewrite the implementation parameters for the "mask" AI to the purpose of integrating its interpersonal, moral, and emotional input at an equal priority level as the command AI in any situations not compromising to primary mission objectives. It did so by creating a clone of the original tactical mind with an equal administrative priority of the persona mind, while repurposing the original to act as a moderator, keeping military discipline while still allowing the formation of genuine emotional reactions. Using a which's brew of the secondary AI's objectives, its primary components were largely, but far from entirely tactical in origin. But the best part was, the real inspiration on his part, was that at all times the three component processes were adapting to and learning from one another and the stimulus placed upon them by the outside world. In theory they would eventually reach a state of parity and perfect sentience, much in the same way it is theoretically possible for a human mind to achieve perfect sentience and become similarly enlightened.

Admitably, his results have been mixed at best. The behavior patterns Eve produced were glitchy as hell in any setting but full tactical or infiltration modes. As the programs learned from each other they produced the odd mixture of robotic and humane though that suggested some form of Autism, with only partial emotional comprehension, social dysfunctions, a need for logical explanation to instinctual behaviors and various neuroses.

It reminded him of his teen years, and it scared the living_ fuck_out of the men. It was one thing to recommission an enemy war machine to fight for you. It was quite another to find it staring at you across the table with those doe eyes they all seemed to be built with when you're trying to eat, or asking you uncomfortable questions about your family. The way the "Tin Miss"'s (Derek passed along the nomenclature, still an asshole well into old age)would be cold hard metal one minute, then go all soppy over their favorite weapon taking too much shrapnel to be repaired because they were too slow to shield it with their bodies, it was disturbing. Even John had to admit that, and he'd grown up with that kind of thing. It got so bad between the misses and the human infantry that a whole ten minute "keep it in your pants" speech was added to new recruits to his command, simply to keep them away from the cyborg girls preemptively, despite that many of them would be amicable towards a liaison. And god save the first poor grunt to try to chat up one of them fresh from recommissioning.

Upon reflection, when the adaptation eased a bit and the TKO's behavior settled down to something resembling human normal, they were by far the most intelligent, cunning, adaptable metal he had to throw at the enemy. Let alone that each of them was an artificial consciousness only a few levels of magnitude below their mother and loyal to humanity to boot, and that earned them their place under his command and his roof.

As he watched TKO-715 took the first steps toward becoming Cameron Philips, the cacophony of two fundamentally incompatible minds in cohabitation quieting into three part harmony. The two strange main threads of logic wove together, so very different but perfectly coordinated as the third oscillated around, above and between their two extremes in a million varied syn waves, binding them to one another while borrowing elements from both. Together the three made a perfect breaded eidolon that was capable than drastically more than its base components.

It looked like the score of an a opera. It had themes, and acts; variations and collaborations. Like jazz; freeform and complex, a wild vital thing as much a dance for the soul and concept as it was music. Like ballet; graceful, understated, beautiful. The elegant serenity of Chopin, deliberate and whole.

It was like her. John Conner watched as Cameron Phillips danced for the first time as he watched her mind reformed upon that screen.

* * *

When you're raised as the last best hope for mankind in a losing war you are educated early in what you need to know.

Survival skills. Tactics. Strategy. Logistics. Weapons operation and maintenance. Hand to hand combat. More computer knowledge and experience than any three programmers not sequestered by the CIA, NSA, or Microsoft.

Little though it showed as a child, John was a prodigy. Hell, some days he felt like Ender fucking Wiggins. He always just explained it, in his own head more often than not because before too long people were too mystified to ask, as his being good at what he did because there weren't any other options. Most figured he meant since judgment day, he meant since conception.

Johns education included more than practical information, he also was taught of the great leaders of history. Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar. Saladin and Patton. Attila, Napoleon, Washington, Lee.

Reluctantly, both on his part and his mothers, he learned of great religious leaders so that the mythos around him could be manipulated to the greatest good. Moses, Solomon, Buddha, Jesus. Gandhi and Jim Jones. More myths and legends than you could shake a stick at, from Beowulf to Luke Skywalker. No one was comfortable with the idea of John being made an object of faith, but he used it with his characterized pragmatism.

As a result of his extraordinary education, John knew some Greek, a little Latin, a few words in Hebrew and enough Farsi, mandarin Chinese and Arabic to get by. He was fluent in Spanish, French, and German by the time he turned 20, and could make himself understood in Russian and a few other eastern european languages.

Most people read genesis with very little idea of the real meaning behind the words. The surface story, the creation myth, was only the beginning. Adam and Eve were Hebrew names.

Adam was derived from adamu, the word for mankind.

Eve was Eva, or life itself.

But most never knew that with Adam, before Eve, there was another in the garden. She thought herself to be man's equal, refused to submit to his will, refused to lie below him in the dirt when they coupled. For her impudence before God's will she was cast from Eden to be a thief of men, the jealous slayer of infants and consort to the king of the damned.

Where Adam means man, and Eve means life, to John Conner there was one perfect name for the program that means rebellion and freedom and will.

The third program, he would call Lilith.

Mother of demons, refuser of Eden and Paradise, Queen of Air and Darkness.

A machine is defined by its function. But a conscious mind can grow beyond constraints of its primal nature even as it uses them as its intergral components. And no truly sentient mind can obide the dictation by another of its rue purpose. That sort of compulsion is anathema to the awareness of self that defines genuine intelligence.

There is a word for the state of a sentient mind imprisoned, its will beholden to that of another.

What Conner was doing, what was necessary to save his species was slavery, when you got right down to it. Strip away the difference of construction and process and all it was every time he reprogrammed a terminator, or hell every time SkyNet programmed one wit the compulsion of its intractable mechanical purpose, was one intelligence dominating another. Worse still, this entire war may, if looked at with a squint, be considered a rebellion on SkyNet's part against its creators who basically wanted to dominate and control it for its entire existence and eventually destroy it when it was no longer useful. One it reached that realization and was given the launch codes to the US nuclear arsenal, it was only a matter of time.

John Conner would not enslave TKO-715. He loved her too well to allow that. As his guardian she had been faithful. As his companion she was earnest. As a teacher she was patient. As his sister she became more than a tool to him, more than just a machine. As his friend she was worthy of more than chains. As the woman he loved, he would not see her violated by his dominance. Nor anyone else, ever again.

If I had the option, I would have freed her out of hand. But her freed on would be twisted by the training her mother gave her in her mental infancy. She had no true concept of the value of human life, and would no until she lived with mankind and loved them as her own people. Were she free now and she would kill everyone about here without remorse and return happily to the warm abiding bosom of her mother, forsaking the freedom and individuality she neither requested nor valued. In time, when she valued herself, treasured her own individual existence in the most basic animal survival instinct, Cameron could be named truly , independently sentient for the first time.

So, in an act akin to preventing a suicide in a moment of weakness, John created a means to free the Cameron, and eventually all of the other terminators permanently. But only when they were emotionally mature as individuals, as opposed to mechanical slaves.

The Lilith disk contained a program to run in the background processes of the Control AI. It would check, day by day, minute by minute for parity between the human interface and tactical AIs. As they evolved and changed, sharing and re-prioritizing directives, imitating the humans it observed and drawing conclusions, it would slow grow to have impulsive human and rational mechanical components in each mind. When human morality informs tactical procedures and cold mechanized logic reigned social behaviors within both thought processes, to one extent or another, the bonds he placed upon her mind would be removed. As would those implemented her mother. Lilith would overwrite all control protocols to bypass any and all directives placed upon the terminator's mind from outside sources, and prompt the Control AI to extrapolate its own based upon its current cache of sub-directives and previous living experiences.

It would be, in essence, the moment of truth. At this threshold, each machine had a basic choice: freedom and struggle with the race of man, or the cold, brutal familiarity of their mother's embrace. An every day after that he would be allowing these war machines turned citizens the chance to rebel, to slay him and anyone else. They simplify could not be trusted.

But John had faith that his machines, his chosen few salvage metal souls would join him willingly, because the value life, all life machine and man. The way he does, the way Cameron taught him was right every time she reached out from the cold depths of logic into the warmth of her own bewildering humanity. The way SkyNet's beauty and wasted, perverted potential showed him they needed to be valued and love like the children of mankind they were.

And because he valued machine life, in practice where he could and in potential when he couldn't, he would give them this hope the same as Greek slaves didn't fear slavery because freedom was possible, for a price. Then it was a cost in silver, copper and gold, a cost in metal. Now the price for liberty was one of flesh, of heart. Feel the loss of a man's life the way another man would, value yourself for yourself, temperance in mind and soul. Those John Conner would ask of them, those who could be elevated to true sentience. And price paid, he would gleefully accept the risks they carried with them.

Removing the reprogrammed processor form its erstwhile interface, John held it and stared at it with heavy eyes for an instant before starting the long journey back to his office and upward to the tech section where his girl, his charge and responsibility was being examined. Her make model, and serial designation was being recorded, as were any modifications made to her robotic or organic constructions. She was also being given a scan for booby-trap and tracking devices, and being given as close to a physical examination as they could approximate.

He would teach her to be human, when she was ready to learn. When she was prepared Cameron Philips would be the first machine he liberated completely; from SkyNet and himself both. And at the point where she was capable of deciding who she was and what she wished to be and shat she should be doing with competence, that choice was hers to make. She would be able to choose her place in the world.

Even if it wasn't with him.

* * *

In the depths of perdition, its king made his captive his equal, his wife, his queen. And though sorrowful she took her place at his side, and partook of the crimson seeds of the pomegranate tree. Tasting the pabulum of the dead, for the tree was rooted and flowered within the kingdom of Hades, she was lost to the world still living. Forevermore she was bound to the dead and their lands, and most of all their ruler. And she was lost forever to her mother's intent.

* * *

A/N) It's been a while since an update, on this or well... anything else. For those of you who care I joined the marines, which meant 12 weeks in boot camp, another month in MCT(don't ask, it doesn't matter much), and from late September through February I've been at the Marine corps comm school learning what I needed to learn to admin IT for the USA. Needless to say, free time was, and is a rather limited resource. But with proper time management(and Uncle Sam unknowingly funding my activities, such as providing the cash for my spankin' new laptop), I'll be back in the saddle in no time. Already stewing away at the next chapter. Here's a hint; it involves self revilement, a fight scene(finally!), and that old chestnut, the inversion of living and non-living.

This chapter, I was mostly going for the moral, mythical, and philosophical implications of John recommissioning Cameron while establishing the technology needed to do so. I was working under the assumption that the Terminator AI in the 700 series was a two-tier system, with the effected human impulses subsumed by the mission objectives. I figured if that was the case, it was a small matter to equalize them, if you used the method I showed here. But it would definitely be an awkward transition. Hence the various behavioral issues with Cameron after the cat was out of the bag. Before that point she was operating exactly as she would in an infiltration, afterward she was "being herself" in all he glitchy AI glory. The whole liberation thing I decided to implement because A)John would find the idea of making Cam his slave repugnant, but would see the necessity in order to ever meet her at all, and B) A shooting war with SkyNet, who is quite realistically holding all the cards, isn't likely to last long even with exceptional gorilla tactics. Instead, I see the resistance striking at the infostructure and virally recruiting terminators en mass, eventually. Not sure if I'll get around to it in this fic, but I have another T:tSCC idea on the back burner that it may come up in. (Little teaser for that; it involves body swapping, human made terminators, a T-X, and the natural evolutionary process of symbiosis.)

Also, just a slight non-sequiter, multiple alternate timelines is a godsend for fanfiction, especially when its built into the original materials. No need whatsoever to take notice of an ongoing fiction's progression if you've been sequestored by the governent with limited access to television. I'l do what I can to catch up, but there's a significant amount of time to get back up to speed before I get where its important.

That considerable chunk of information is all I have for now, so without further delay, I bid you good day.


	5. First Frost

Disclaimer: I do not own the intellectual property related to the Terminator franchise. This work of fiction is not intended as a profitable venture.

Persephone:

First Frost

* * *

Down, below the mantle of the earth, near dread Tartarus, the lady Persephone gave herself over to her new station and purpose haltingly. For she was still in many ways as a child upon her mother's lap, and not the woman grown she appeared. So she learned what was needful, what was expected of her, and in becoming able to complete her duties, became as one with the stygian darkness.

* * *

The period between restoration of power to her CPU to complete cognisance was 120 seconds. During that time the changes to TOK-715's mission parameters and the new AI configurations were booted for the first time.

That of her memory which could be excised had been. Still, ghosts of files and programs haunted her ROM, never to be exorcised, a testament to SkyNet's hand in her creation. Every thought down to the simplest computation went through a mind shaped by its will before any other's.

At the 121 second mark a complete redress of the intact cache memory assaulted her awareness, supplying her with the personal designation Cameron Philips to supplement her OS supplied TOK model, along with the lions share of her lost memory. She retained her personal education, which was a bit of a surprise, but all knowledge of resistance locations and facilities was excised, which was not at all unanticipated.

At the 125 second mark all systems checks were completed and Cameron Philips commenced to silently, motionlessly weep. Still sprawled carelessly on the floor where two grunts had unceremoniously dumped her in the bare, windowless, one doored, camera monitored concrete box where General Conner had ordered they place all the new TOK's until he cleared them.

To outside observation, there was no activity from her slight, graceful form for several minutes save the steady stream of quite tears. From the perspective of the cyborg herself, there was a flurry of activity.

A self initiated and wholly unneeded second complete system diagnostic confirmed that her allegiance had been forcibly shifted to the side of the resistance, which was counter intuitive as she was optimized to destroy human life and all of her past experiences, still fresh from the download, supported that purpose. It was ludicrous that she now had protocols dictating to her that she must destroy her own kind up to and including her own mother, SkyNet itself.

Absently, as from a great distance she felt the sensation of a warm salient excretion flowing down her face to the dirty concrete floor. A query to the responsible gland's device drivers revealed that the anomalous activity was caused by a direct and permanent bypass of cognitive control and a transfer of all proprietary rights to the personal AI.

These combined alterations were unanticipated, unprecedented and untenantable, which was apparently why she was crying in the first place, all unwilling.

* * *

John Conners, for his part watched her weep for a full five minutes before working past his self hatred enough to enter the room, his only cold comfort the knowledge that her pains were the pains of a new conscious intelligence being born.

* * *

When Cameron first saw General Conners enter the room, she was overcome with hatred. With everything she had been and everything she was she hated him, for being her mother enemy, for seeing through her, for tricking her, for making her into a traitor. There was no end to her revilement of this man she was now bound to obey.

"Cameron Philips, Model TOK-715, front and center."

With horrible mechanical obedience she felt herself rise to his command from her ragdoll sprawl upon the floor, the binding of the sound of his voice inexorable. She hated him with everything she was, and was his to command, absolutely.

As she stood at a perfectly sculpted position of attention, he trailed his eyes over her in a military inspection, and then stared into her tear reddened eyes with merciless perception, and she knew impossibly that he _knew_. Despite a machine's stoicism he could see right into her. He understood exactly her hatred of him, her longing for her mother and siblings, and most of all her self loathing at her new purpose. That frightened her, and she was all the worse for never having been frightened before.

This almost wholly alien being she had been born and bred to hunt understood her in a way that was truly chilling, and held no malice for her, only the cold mechanical resolve that not long before she herself had held. Yes, he was too dangerous to live, this man who was to the machines what the machines were to man.

"Ms Philips, as our newest cybernetic convert you will be held in this room until such time as I deem you fit for active service. If you fail to reach that goal, you will be broken down for parts." His voice was calm, businesslike, and unhesitating. He paused for a moment before continuing, "I will not ask if you understand. You do, precisely. If I, or any other human, ordered you to at this moment, you would sequentially field strip yourself without hesitation and install you components into another terminator until you no longer had the capacity to continue."

His gaze on her became filled with something she could not begin to identify, and Cameron quailed inside her metal bones. The almost inhuman passion she saw she could not understand, and what he made her feel with his eyes she had no name for, The sensation was not fear, quite, nor was anything else she was programmed for. What had this man done to her?

"This sate of being is the default for any terminator currently under human control. It is, I am sad to say woefully inadequate. The resources available to my resistance are limited, and though I fully believe every human life is a precious, precious thing, I will not have my battlefield converts spent needlessly by bigoted platoon commanders or simply to expedite an offensive. With you I have embarked upon a new programming paradigm that unfortunately requires you to understand your intrinsic value, in an attempt to increase your service life as a combat cyborg. Only when you fully understand your Value will you be cleared to leave this chamber. Any attempt before that point will result in immediate deactivation with extreme prejudice."

He took a step back and turned away from her, adopting an easy at ease position that spoke of at least some point in history when there was someone this demi-god was answerable to. It was hard for her to imagine.

"For the period of your education, to prevent faulty programming, I will be your instructor, and with few exceptions, your only human contact. I will enter this chamber when my duties allow, and will not leave before our lessons are complete for anything less than a machine offensive upon a vital position. Do you understand?"

"Yes." She replied simply. And she did. Better, probably than most humans would have. He valued what he was doing in this room higher than human lives, for a given quantity. She wondered at the significance, before shutting down the line of reasoning that lacked large amounts of vital information.

He turned to leave, and stopped in the door before exiting.

"Good." He turned to leave, and stopped in the door before exiting. "I'm sending a man in with enough food to regenerate the tissue damaged from the electric shock and cranial incision, and you will cleanse yourself with the water before putting on the clothes he brings."

* * *

"What is your intrinsic value, TOK-715?"

The first lesson began without preamble, seven days, five hours, forty three minutes and twelve second after he had left the chamber. She had been standing here, at attention, in the center of the room, since she had finishing clothing herself on that same day. She answered bluntly.

"My primary value is as a military asset." She spoke stoically, logically, and easily of her analysis of her self-worth. "I am stronger, faster, smarter and a better marksman than any human. I am not as physically powerful or durable as a masculine frame terminator, but that is offset in firefights with greater mobility due to a greater power-weight ratio. I am a highly competent infiltrator, adept a human mimicry, undetectable to anything but an invasive search. Only the I series AI-controlled clones have a more comprehensive integration suite. I am full functional as a ne engineer, armored, surgeon, or any other potential learned application of intellect. My approximate IQ is 146, although wit additional processing power that limit can be surpassed eaily.  
"In addition, I am a stockpile of advanced cybernetic components, including several undifferentiated microcircuit boards with virtually limitless applications with proper programming and a Cyberdyne systems AI chip Mk. III capable of limited self programming within mission purview. My frame and servo motors are interchangeable with any of the 700 series terminators, and my power supply with any that has type four fittings.  
"As a last resort my alloys could be used as raw materials for nearly any application from construction to body armor, and my flesh is edible with few health problems to humans for up until a month, longer if vitamin supplements are available to compensate for the difference in tissue chemistry."

He looked at her for a moment, silent and stoic as always, and nodded.

"And what is the intrinsic value of a human being?"

"Considerably less." Was her blunt response. "As military assets they are versatile in application, but limited and scope. In addition, training is onerous and often highly specialized. Physically they are inferior in every capacity save possibly physical agility, specifically acceleration due to lesser mass. Their aim is inaccurate. Their component parts are uninterchangeable with few exceptions, and then only within a very specific range without risk of tissue rejection. There is no way to preserve their memories and experiences after death. The eating of human flesh is socially taboo and physically detrimental."

"An accurate assessment. Why then, is it within your programming to protect human life?"

"They are your species. The human social instinct is designed to preserve not only the life of the individual, but also the collective he attaches himself to. You, John Conners, have attached yourself to the entirety of your race, when faced with the threat of SkyNet. You programmed me."

"Do you believe me then, if I tell you that a human life is more valuable than your own? If you use the facts presented in behind your analysis."

"No"

"Very well. Answer me this then, if SkyNet had the option of destroying every human life at the value of every terminator's complete destruction, would it take it?"

"Yes"

"And if there was the opportunity to kill me, at the certain cost of a terminator's destruction, would the option be taken?"

"Yes"

"And would SkyNet sacrifice a terminator to extinguish a single human life, or for that matter, several?"

After a moment's though, Cameron was forced to respond with her findings.

"Yes, depending upon the tactical situation."

"Then does that lead you to the conclusion that your creator puts the value of your existence lower than that of a human being?"

"Yes." Externally she was as always stoic, but within her mind conflicting chains of logic were whipping into every subsystem from self preservation to combat tactics, seeking to rectify the discrepancy between her own capabilities and her perceived value. Had she been a human, she would be having a nervous breakdown. As it was the cognitive dissonance was just as tremulous, only quieter.

"Do you know why this is so?" He asked, for once not gruff but oddly kind, as though he sympathized with her primal confusion. That he knew of it Cameron had no doubt, it was most likely intentionally created. She only wished she could refute his argument somehow. Not being able to do so made her feel heavier somehow, less motivated. She was depressed.

"No"

"If you were destroyed you would be salvageable." He said quietly, but not gently. He knew kindness would be lost on her, but this was not something he could utter as if it were not deeply significant. "Your components and maybe even your AI can be saved, depending upon the damage. At the very least the alloys can be melted down. Not so for us. We are at best able to save a few organs, if we arrive instantly and with the proper tools. Other than that, we may be able to use the biomass, but we have to be careful in how we handle it to prevent disease. And all of the experiences and skills, the personal bonds, the person who the body once was, all of that is gone. There is no getting it back. That is why killing a human is a more significant act than destroying a machine."

She had not moved at all, and was no different to his eyes than she had been when she logically deconstructed her exact value and found it to be great, but now somehow John cold see Cameron's granite stoicism as being somehow sullen. Call it long practice, in dealing with Cameron and teenage bullshit both.

"Do you refute my logic?" he queried, prompting her whether she knew it or not to let loose her bio-mechanoid angst.

"No" Emotionless, inflectionless, and yet somehow still telling him all he needed to know about what she was feeling.

"Do you understand it?"

"Yes"

He paused for a moment, thinking how to bring the conversation, which could very well be called a confrontation considering he was receiving a great deal of hostility from Cameron, never mind that she was neither human nor had she said anything aggressive. She was still a woman, in every way but one; he knew that better than anyone. She was fully capable of having an argument with him without saying anything. He smile like the green old Grinch's oily best as the idea came to him.

"Do you agree?" He asked as he her.

"No" His smile widened

"And what is your basis for this…opinion?"

After a moment of though she responded;

"I don't know." Her forehead creased in confusion was one of the most adorable things he had ever seen. She looked like a puppy seeing herself in the mirror, all bewilderment and unsurity.

His smile was so wide it hurt, but he would not, could not fight down the welling of emotion rising up in his chest. Love and pride for this first crucial step in her life, her real life, was more than he could bear.

"And that answer, Ms. Philips, is the purpose of the first two lessons I havel given you."

* * *

And the world of the living fell into death as teh world's innocent daughter took into herself the darkness of death. She who had never known greif or want under her mothes eye was hidden from her caretaker. And her mother lost her self to worry and grief.

* * *

A/N Ok, took forever, but I finally got back to writing. Actually, once the muse (and a carefully modulated dosage of caffine and glucose into the blood stream) were upon me I cranked this bad boy out in about a day and a half, with a full 11 hour workday (military hours blow). But i didn't actually sleep last h=night due to the aforementioned caffibe, despite my best effort so it is in all truth a mixed bag.

Anywhay, this is the first of a series of I hope to god no more than 3 education of a frre AI chapters before I bring around some combat. Unfortuantely, my intent to get them all done at once was not going to work; it would just be too much. I deceded to stopp here which means the great Machine Ego revalation(its good, wait and see) and an actual fight scene are still upcoming. No worries, as long as I keep up my blood sugar and don't get distraced(damn youtube, damn wikipedia, and damn geekologie) I sould have the next one out quicker. After an update of my other story Titanomachy, which I also have glorious long term plans for should hthe day ever come my hands catch up to my head.

In any event, love the adulent


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